INFO 360 Design Thinking

Schedule • Grading • Activities • Reading • Midterm • Project

In this class I'll teach you how to think like a designer. You'll learn what designers do, how they do it, and how to do some of the things they do. We'll focus on the design of user interfaces and information systems. By the end of the course you won't be a great designer, but you'll learn what you need to practice to become a great designer. This will empower you to learn more about design by engaging more deeply in the Puget Sound UX design community.

The structure of this course is simple:

1. I teach you about design for 5 weeks through a series of readings and in-class practice.
2. A midterm to see how much you learned.
3. With a teammate, you design something useful for one of your classmates.
4. With a teammate, you write a design specification that details your design thoroughly.
5. With a teammate, you create a video prototype that communicates your design persuasively.

Sound good? Let's get started!

Office Hours

My office hours this quarter are Wednesdays 10:00-12:00 at CSE 218. Please, write me at least 24 hours in advance to secure your 30 minutes slot. (If this does not work for you, talk to me after class or write me: we will figure something out.)

Devices in Class

We will use smartphones and laptops throughout the quarter to facilitate activities and project work in-class. However, research and student feedback clearly shows that using devices on non-class related activities not only harms your own learning, but other students' learning as well. Therefore, I only allow device usage during activities that require devices. At all other times, you should not be using your device. I'll help you remember this by announcing when to bring devices out and when to put them away.

Schedule

Week 1 — Introductions
9/27 - SLIDES	Who is the team? What is this class about? What is it like to design? Read syllabus + Q&A
Week 2 — Design
10/2	Reading: What designers do - [SUBMIT] Activity: What do you want to do? - [PREPARE] Activity: Empathy - [ALL IN CLASS]
10/4	Reading (30 min): How to design Activity (70 min): Compare two paradigms
Week 3 — User Research
10/9	Reading (30 min): How to understand problems Activity (80 min): Contextual inquiries Activity (50 min): Interviews
10/11	Reading (30 min): How to define problems Activity (80 min): Define a problem
Week 4 — Ideation and Prototyping
10/16	Reading (30 min): How to be creative Activity (70 min): Creativity in context
10/18	Reading (30 min): How to prototype Activity (70 min): Sketching
Week 5 — User Interfaces and Critique
10/23	Reading (30 min): How to design user interfaces Activity (80 min): Paper prototypes
10/25	Reading (30 min): How to be critical Activity (80 min): Critique
Week 6 — Evaluation
10/30	Reading (30 min): How to evaluate empirically Activity (80 min): Design and test an alarm clock
11/2	Reading (30 min): How to evaluate analytically Activity (50 min): Heuristic evaluation
Week 7 — Define your Problem
11/6	Nigini is at the CSCW Conference. (??? teaches) Midterm (45 min): Did you learn everything from the last 5 weeks? Discuss (20 min): Project requirements Teams (5 min): Pair up! Activity (40 min): Plan research
11/8	Nigini is at the CSCW Conference. (??? teaches) Activity (45 min): Research Due: Problem definition draft Activity (110 min): Critique problems, ideate solutions
Week 8 — Build Your Low-Fidelity Prototype
11/13	Due: Two low-fidelity prototypes Activity (60 min): Prototype workshop Activity (30+60 min): Prototype critique and iteration
11/15	Due: One low-fidelity prototype Activity (110 min): Prototype critique and iteration
Week 9 — Build Your High-Fidelity Prototype
11/20	Due: High-fidelity prototype Activity (110 min): Evaluate and plan Select a method: interviews, usability test, heuristic evaluation, GenderMag walkthrough, or any other appropriate method Gather evidence Activity (50 min): Brainstorm limitations
11/22	NO CLASS, Thanks Giving
Week 10 — Write your Specification
11/27	Discuss midterm answers (15 min) Activity (110 min): Testing and Improving Design
11/29	Discuss midterm results (15 min) Due: Solution description draft Activity (110 min): Specification critique
Week 11 — Present your design
12/4	Course evaluation reminder Project presentation guidelines Activity (110 min): Designing your Project website and create a pull request.
12/6	Project presentations (Guidelines)
Finals week: Online peer-evaluation
12/11, time 6 pm	Design specification due (upload to Canvas) Website: no new pull requests will be accepted.
12/13, time 6 pm	Project peer evaluations due (fill out survey)

Grading

There are 100 points you can earn in this class:

• Activities (30 points, 1 point each). Engage to get credit.
• Reading (20 points, 2 points each). Prove you read and understood the reading.
• Midterm (20 points). Prove you know and can do everything in the first 5 weeks of the class.
• Design specification (20 points, team score). Prove you can design something that solves a problem.
• Project site (10 points, team score). Prove you can persuade someone that you solved a problem.

After mathematically rounding your points to the nearest point, I'll map your points to a 4.0 scale using the table below.

≥95	4.0	≥88	3.3	≥81	2.6	≥74	1.9	≥67	1.2
≥94	3.9	≥87	3.2	≥80	2.5	≥73	1.8	≥66	1.1
≥93	3.8	≥86	3.1	≥79	2.4	≥72	1.7	≥65	1.0
≥92	3.7	≥85	3.0	≥78	2.3	≥71	1.6	≥64	0.9
≥91	3.6	≥84	2.9	≥77	2.2	≥70	1.5	≥63	0.8
≥90	3.5	≥83	2.8	≥76	2.1	≥69	1.4	≥62	0.7
≥89	3.4	≥82	2.7	≥75	2.0	≥68	1.3	≤61	0.0

Note that 70% of your grade is individual and 30% is team. If you do perfectly on the individual parts of the class and contribute nothing to the project, you can't pass the class. So be a good design partner!

Late work receives no credit. There are some exceptions:

• If you can provide a note from a health care professional documenting the reason for your absence, I may accept late submissions (but not for activities, since those can't be reproduced).
• You can miss up to 3 activities without penalty and without documentation. This should be enough to allow for sickness, unavoidable travel, or other personal matters.
• If you miss a reading quiz, you can make up the quiz credit by sending a critique of the reading to me within a week of the due date that reports at least three improvements to the content, including high level issues such as topics that should be discussed or points you think are wrong, to low level issues including spelling, grammar, or clarity.

Activities

Each day in class we'll practice some skill. You'll get 1 point if you engage in and complete the activity. How to get credit for the activity will depend on the activity; sometimes being present will be enough, sometimes being to class on time will be enough, and sometimes you'll have to turn something in. Because there aren't exactly 30 class periods in class, the total number of points you receive will be scaled to 30 points as follows: (30 x (# activity points earned) / (# of activity points possible)).

Reading

Readings are due twice a week, and each time, involve reading two things: 1) the chapter from Andy Ko's open book pointed our in our schedule and 2) something related to the chapter, selected from links in the chapter, or from anything else in the world (but you have to find it).

The day that each reading is due, we'll do the following:

• Share what you're confused about.
• We clarify confusions.
• I give you a question to answer individually about the assigned reading.
• You spend 5 minutes writing a polished answer, using only the knowledge in your head.
• You turn in your answer.
• You discuss your answer with your neighbor.
• We discuss the correct answer as a class.

If your answer is correct, you'll receive 1 point. I will give partial credit for partially correct answers, at my discretion.

Your selected reading assignment is your choice. Before class, read one of the articles linked in the reading or choosing something design-related book, blog post, magazine article, newspaper article, or online video that that is relevant to the topic of the chapter. If you choose a book, it's okay to just read the first chapter of the book. For your additional 1 point of reading credit, submit to Canvas a summary of no more than 500 words that:

• Summarizes the point of the article.
• Describes the thing you found most interesting about the article.
• Includes a citation to what you read.

In class, after we discuss the assigned reading, we will:

• Break into groups of four
• Discuss your selected readings as a group, identifying one insight from the readings that connect with the topic of the day to share with the class
• Elect someone to share the insights with the class.
• We'll hear from 3-4 groups about their most interesting insight.

Midterm

The purpose of the midterm is to find out what you know, not to penalize you for not knowing something. To this end, for every question you get wrong on the midterm, you can earn half the credit you lost by submitting to Canvas, for each problem:

1. The question
2. Your answer
3. How many points you lost on the answer
4. Why your answer was wrong

If your explanation is correct, you'll receive half of your points back. You'll submit these on Canvas no later than 2 weeks after the midterm.